Mowing...hate it or love it

[TnRiver46]

I gotta mow moms house after work, I think it’s already in the 90s right now 

[NavyToad]

There’s always something I’d rather be doing than mowing the lawn and there won’t be anything on my tombstone about how well manicured my lawn was.

[gim]

10 hours ago, J Francho said:

Yes, I am mowing tonight.

Oh come on. That lawn can be mowed in like 15 minutes!

[Bird]

Lol, I have a buddy of mine that won't let you walk on his lawn after he mows, claims footprints show up, not kidding.

 

I encourage foot travel in my yard, horses welcome to. Lol

 

[padlin]

4 hours ago, Bird said:

Lol, I have a buddy of mine that won't let you walk on his lawn after he mows, claims footprints show up, not kidding.

 

I encourage foot travel in my yard, horses welcome to. Lol

 

I've been working on improving the lawn for the last few years, the fertilizer service guy says to cut mine at 4". Sounds excessive but that's what I've done, more or less.

 

I was doing some chicken wings on the charcoal grill last night, which I keep on the far side of the yard. With this good weather I went barefoot, man that dense 4" grass felt great, felt like laying down in it.

 

Think I'll encourage barefoot travel in the yard, snow angles too, at least till it burns up.

 

Since I picked up a zero turn a month ago I'm enjoying mowing the lawn.

 

[J Francho]

9 hours ago, gimruis said:

Oh come on. That lawn can be mowed in like 15 minutes!

That's the front. Takes about 20 minutes. The back is where all the trouble is. 

[casts_by_fly]

We bought our house in Sep 2019.  It had been foreclosed/empty/contractor for roughly 3-4 years prior to that.  The yard was minimally maintained in that time other than to knock down the tops.  The weeds were bad when we came in september, but we had a lawn guy and we made a plan.  He then sold his business 2 months later and the plan disappeared after one fall post emergent treatment for weeds/crabgrass.  All through 2020 and 2021 I tried to get it under control with my lawn guys.  I like my lawn guys generally.  They do a pretty good job cutting (aside from the new kid they gave a pushmower to).  And for the price they charge it isn't worth my time to do it (I have about 12000 sq ft but split by fences into about 4-5 zones). But they are very much a cutting operation.  The guys on the ground aren't specialists in turf management and the owner mostly looks after the commercial jobs.  So feedback from the guys on the ground about what a lawn needs doesn't happen.  I've learned this now.

 

In 2020 it was almost July before it was treated for the first time (the original plan wasn't communicated).  By then it was too late so we only did fall weedkill.  The spring of 2021 saw pre-emergent and I thought we were going to get there but the preemergent did next to nothing and by May I had a forest of crabgrass, foxtail, corn speedwell, and a whole bunch of other weeds and a very sparse lawn.  When the owner finally came out he couldn't believe that it all survived whatever they put down and scheduled his specialist guy to come out.  A month and a half later the guy finally comes out and puts down Scott's 3 in 1.  It did nothing for the weeds.  It was at that point (roughly Sep last year) that I decided to take matters into my own hands.  I did some weed kill experiments with different products and found one that really worked.  I did my entire yard and knocked back the heavy.  I fed with a winter focused fertilizer.  Over the winter it was bare dirt in a lot of places.  I think I was over 50% weed most everywhere.  I almost considered the nuclear option of killing everything and starting fresh but my wife wasn't thrilled by that idea.  So this spring I did things backwards to most and seeded as soon as the soil temps were warm enough.  I've hit it with fertilizer 4 or 5 times now.  I've been keeping the weeds at bay with sprays since I couldn't put down pre-emergent due to the seed. 

 

And the lawn has responded.  Areas of bare dirt are now lush green grass even in the well shaded areas.  The edge areas that used to be weeds and leaves are growing grass (expanding one yard by about 3').  The moss is dying back.  The weeds are somewhat in check and maybe 10% of the yard now.  Visually its been an incredible turnaround.  I'll take some pictures tomorrow after they cut.  I didn't take good 'before' pictures but I have quite a few of game in the yard that will give the idea.

 

Now that I've taken control of my lawn care, I have considered cutting myself.  My guys do it once a week and that's fine in the summer.  This spring though when it was growing like wildfire it needed it 2-3 times a week.  I'm considering a mower to keep up on it then so it isn't getting whacked by 50% once a week.  I've also started leveling it a bit.  There are humps and lumps in the yard that mowing high helps hide (my guys mow at about 3") but it still cuts short in spots.  So after they cut on a wednesday I get a half ton of sand and spread it in the low bits to level it.  This summer I'll put a little more time into that to help even things out a bit in the front.  And then this fall it will be more overseed and fertilizer to thicken it up even more when the summer weeds die.  

[gim]

36 minutes ago, casts_by_fly said:

I almost considered the nuclear option of killing everything and starting fresh

LOL the nuclear option.  Good one

[casts_by_fly]

31 minutes ago, gimruis said:

LOL the nuclear option.  Good one

 

It was seriously considered.  I have a gallon of glycophate that I use for the driveway and persistent weeds in the woods like poison ivy and others.  One time I sprayed an invasive tree with it.  The branches were about 10' off the ground and I sprayed what I could reach.  I didn't consider the spray fallout and made a 10' diameter patch of bare dirt in the dog yard from spray you couldn't even see falling.  I have a powerline with ferns that I'm turning into a food plot for this fall.  It is very brown right now when everything is dark green, all due to spraying.  Given that my lawn was more weeds than grass, it was a very real possibility that I was going to spray it all before winter, deal with the muddy mess, and plant fresh in the spring.

[J Francho]

1 hour ago, gimruis said:

LOL the nuclear option.  Good one

I've gone "all Monsanto" on the border of the pool.

[TOXIC]

I did the “nuclear option” on my front yard and had a professional landscaper come in and plan out all the plantings, re-grade the entire front lot and put down sod.  When the old grass/weeds were scraped off and it was obvious to me it needed about 4 dump truck loads of topsoil because there was nothing but clay left, he explained the new sod came with enough soil attached that it wouldn’t be necessary.  They put the sod down on top of a green plastic mesh because the grading was such that my yard was like a bowl with an exit swale off to the side. It’s what they had to do to keep water runoff away from the foundation of the house.  I labored over that yard for 3 years with constant weed control, fertilizing, watering, aireation and proper mowing.  I lost.  It wasn’t long before the mower was sucking up that green mesh and with every rain I lost more yard to erosion.  I also have a huge sugar maple that a second lawn specialist told me sucks up about 150 gallons of water a day and as long as that tree was in my front yard, I would have very little chance of keeping grass alive, let alone vibrant.  I have come very close to planting a ground cover of low vines and just let it go.  There’s a couple of houses in the area that have done that and it doesn’t look half bad.  

[TnRiver46]

[Jar11591]

I mow lawns for a living. Mowing my own lawn is like pulling teeth. 

[12poundbass]

5 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

You’re supposed to alternate directions each week. ?

[J Francho]

I just signed a contract for 2023. No more lawn mowing bologna for me!

[Spankey]

6 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

That’s nice grass you have there boss. Nice work. 

[TnRiver46]

1 hour ago, Spankey said:

That’s nice grass you have there boss. Nice work. 

Thanks ! Luckily that zoysia grass was there when I bought the house. The only work I have to do is cut it. It turns 100% yellow the first time it gets cold but that’s fine by me 

1 hour ago, 12poundbass said:

You’re supposed to alternate directions each week. ?

Hahah! I have done that in the past with some diagonals. Been kind of lazy this year, just mow as fast as possible then hook up the boat 

[ThatZX14Fella]

I hate trying to get motivated. I love it once I get going.

[A-Jay]

Aerated the whole property in the rain yesterday.

That was fun.

Hadn't done it in a couple of years.

It needed it .

A-Jay

[casts_by_fly]

I did a bunch of rough leveling on the front yard a couple weeks ago. From the grass guys cutting the same direction for years it seems the yard had about 2” variance between the humps and dips and there were about 6 dips by 30’ long each. That’s too much to top fill in one go, so I did about half that depth and leveled as best I could. After a couple days of settling I seeded with some turf type tall fescue and I’m starting to see the growth now two weeks later. By the first frost it should be in good shape. Tomorrow is weed spray to knock a few back in this bit of the yard. The new dirt had a bunch of seed in it so need to nip it in the bud. 
 

The rest of the yard ranges from awesome dense to more weeds than grass. The pool yard area is awesome. Best I’ve ever seen it.  Last year one third was bare dirt by now. It didn’t take much this year and it’s great. The dog yard is a total mess. We were supposed to have work done on the house and equipment was going to go through there. I didn’t do anything for the grass aside from weed and feed this spring since it’s getting torn up. The work hasn’t started and by the time it does it will be too late to do anything. This yard would get the nuclear option except it’s the main dog area and it can’t be left as dirt as they’d track it everywhere. So I have to spray, seed, feed, prevent, repeat.

[TnRiver46]

1 hour ago, casts_by_fly said:

I did a bunch of rough leveling on the front yard a couple weeks ago. From the grass guys cutting the same direction for years it seems the yard had about 2” variance between the humps and dips and there were about 6 dips by 30’ long each. That’s too much to top fill in one go, so I did about half that depth and leveled as best I could. After a couple days of settling I seeded with some turf type tall fescue and I’m starting to see the growth now two weeks later. By the first frost it should be in good shape. Tomorrow is weed spray to knock a few back in this bit of the yard. The new dirt had a bunch of seed in it so need to nip it in the bud. 
 

The rest of the yard ranges from awesome dense to more weeds than grass. The pool yard area is awesome. Best I’ve ever seen it.  Last year one third was bare dirt by now. It didn’t take much this year and it’s great. The dog yard is a total mess. We were supposed to have work done on the house and equipment was going to go through there. I didn’t do anything for the grass aside from weed and feed this spring since it’s getting torn up. The work hasn’t started and by the time it does it will be too late to do anything. This yard would get the nuclear option except it’s the main dog area and it can’t be left as dirt as they’d track it everywhere. So I have to spray, seed, feed, prevent, repeat.

My dog lot looks like a nuclear testing facility. I saw one of the dogs 90% underground one time 

[casts_by_fly]

10 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

My dog lot looks like a nuclear testing facility. I saw one of the dogs 90% underground one time 

 

ha!  Mine usually aren't diggers.  We have 3.  The 2-year old was a bit of a digger last summer when she was still a puppy but she's chilled out now.  The 9 year old will get into a mood every now and then now, about twice a summer.  There is a small sliver of woods inside the fence with a couple trees.  One is half dead and hollow and gets mice inside of it now and then.  They have chewed the outside quarter of the tree off now and dug a bit of a hole under it.  Then again, I don't care what happens in that bit.  In the woods is out of sight. 

[Jar11591]

2 days, 30+ lawns worth of clippings. Easily over 6 cubic yards. Went the entire month of august without collecting a single clipping because it was so dry. Then we got an entire season’s worth of rain in 2 weeks. 

[J Francho]

Funny this came up. Just had my first visit from the landscapers. I feel so high class right now, lol. 

[steve carpenter]

When I was young my dad had me mow the grass twice with only a reel mower. Once Facing the street, and then across parallel so the line wouldn't show the mowing lanes from the street. I was young and parlayed this into a decent business while in elementary school. Used the money to buy fishing and hunting equipment. I have never underestimated the value of  a good work ethic.